By 'finish things' I am going to assume that you mean they complete their work in a manner such that a coworker can use it without revision. This takes practice

By 'finish things' I am going to assume that you mean they complete their work in a manner such that a coworker can use it without revision. This takes practice and training. If you have limited time with the person (say, 3 weekly meetings over a period of 3 weeks) then I would watch for the following... a) did they do what they said they would do (in the previous meeting) -OR- are they asking for clarification on what was discussed in the previous meeting? b) can you or another dev build and run their code from whatever they last checked in/committed -OR- do you get build errors, compile errors, or runtime errors? c) do they ask questions and help you clarify what needs to be done? Regarding the addicted to novelty, not internalizing business goals question, I see that as more of a management issue than an individual trait. They may be too busy learning a new technology to care about the business goals, in that case the engineering manager needs to make sure they are on track (and that the new technology is relevant to the work being done). Once they become proficient then they can easily internalize the business goals, but they will need repeated exposure.